Freak the mighty: Max's Traits

I have started rereading an old childhood favorite of mine, Freak The Mighty, and started noticing some things about the main character, Max, that I haven't noticed before, specifically his traits. If anyone has read this book, they'll obviously know that Max is a rather large character, as it is mentioned hundreds of times in the book. But I also started noticing that people judge him a lot because of it. Lots of people in the book always act scared around him like he's some giant or something. But no one notices that at heart, he's actually a pretty nice guy. Also, a lot of people make fun of his size, and both max and the mean kid know that max could probably beat the kid up, but they know he wouldn't do it, and that's because they think he's too stupid to do it or something, since he is in L.D. class, another big judgement made about him. But I think the reason why he doesn't beat them up is because he is smart and know's it's not the right thing to do, that violence is not the answer. Also, I don't think that he is dumb, I just think he kind of doesn't want to admit it, like whenever he has to answer a question, he doesn't know it when all the kids are there, but after class when the teacher asks him the question, he knows the answer. It's like he has stage fright or something. People just need to know the good side of him.